What a treat to spend the month of August talking all things home school in my new series Back to Home School. As a second-generation home schooler, I have loved home schooling for almost my whole life. Home schooling was an incredible gift to me as a student and now it is an incredible gift to me as a mom who is home schooling her kids. I share a little bit about my own home school journey in this episode and then jump into discussing the joys of home schooling in high school, as well as the early years. I hope you come away with the reminder that you are doing a good job wherever you’re at in your home-schooling journey. And I hope you’ll be inspired to cast a vision for homeschooling from kindergarten all the way through those beautiful high school years. 

Here are some of the resources mentioned in this episode: 

Learn more about Home School Legal Defense Association here 

Home School High School: a Handbook for Christian Education by Carrie De Fransisco  

Becoming Home Schoolers: Give Your Kids a Great Education, a Strong Family, and a Life They’ll Thank You For Later by Monica Swanson 

Learning Well community with Alicia Hutchinson 

Cloud 9 Adventure  James Eskridge’s first illustrated book with 1000 Hours Outside 

Include these life skills in high school—cooking, travel, finances, home repair, community service, household chores, child care, hospitality, event planning, navigating the doctor’s office, the DMV, filling out forms and paperwork…these are all things they should be learning and doing in high school. 

The Early Years a blog post by Greta Eskridge 

Home School 101 Instagram highlight by Greta Eskridge 

Here are some favorite quotes from this episode: 

*”Being home schooled is one of the greatest gifts of my life.” GE 

*”Someday your kids will be the ones to say to you, ‘mom, dad, being homeschooled is one of the biggest blessing of my life.” GE 

*”There is no perfect educational system.” GE 

*”You are your kid’s first teacher.” GE 

*”You need to have a vision for your home school journey. You need to have a vision for where you want to end up.” GE 

“There are so many reasons to keep home schooling through high school. 

Some of my favorites are: freedom, flexibility, so much less social pressure, the ability to have solid biblical truth as part of their studies, and so much more time together in the last years they’re going to be home.” GE 

*One thing that holds parents back from wanting to home school their kid in high school is that they think their kids are going to miss out on what they see as really important things. But parents need to ask themselves, “is it important to my kid or is it important to me?’” GE 

*”Their high school experience is going to look different than yours because they are home schooled. But different doesn’t mean bad. It just means different.” GE 

*”You don’t need much to home school your kids. You can home school with a Bible, a math book and a library card”. Carole Joy Seid 

*”Home schooling is best when it is personalized to your family and all the ways you live and learn best.” GE 

“Find ways to inject joy into your home school.” GE